42 research outputs found
OBIS-USA: A Data-Sharing Legacy of the Census of Marine Life
This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://www.tos.org/oceanography.The United States Geological Survey's Biological Informatics Program hosts OBIS-USA, the US node of the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS). OBIS-USA gathers, coordinates, applies standard formats to, and makes widely available data on biological collections in marine waters of the United States and other areas where US investigators have collected data and, in some instances, specimens. OBIS-USA delivers its data to OBIS international, which then delivers its data to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and other Web portals for marine biodiversity data. OBIS-USA currently has 145 data sets from 36 participants, representing over 6.5 million occurrence records of over 83,000 taxa from more than 888,000 locations. OBIS-USA, a legacy of the decade-long (2001–2010) international collaborative Census of Marine Life enterprise, continues to add data, including those from ongoing Census projects. Among the many challenges in creating OBIS, including OBIS-USA, were developing a community of trust and shared value among data providers, and demonstrating to providers the value of making their data accessible to others. Challenges also posed by the diversity of data sets relevant to marine biodiversity stored on thousands of computers, in a variety of formats, not all widely accessible, have been met in OBIS-USA by implementing a uniform standard and publishing platform that is easily accessible to a broad range of users
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Marine, Estuarine, and Diadromous Fish Stocks at Risk of Extinction in North America (Exclusive of Pacific Salmonids)
The problem of extinction in the sea has been recognized
only recently by the scientific community (Roberts and
Hawkins 1999). For the last decade, the American Fisheries
Society (AFS) has pursued an initiative to identify marine
fish stocks that may be at risk of extinction in North America
(Musick 1998; Coleman et al. 2000; Musick et al. 2000a;
Musick et al. 2000b; Parker et al. 2000). The present paper
presents the first recognized AFS list of marine, estuarine,
and diadromous fishes that may be at risk of extinction in
North America (exclusive of Pacific salmonids). The geographic
scope of this review includes the coastal waters of
Mexico, the continental United States, Alaska, and Canada.
The objectives in preparing this list have been to identify
stocks at risk at a sufficiently early stage of decline to
avoid listing as threatened or endangered, minimize the
probability of under- or overestimating the risk of extinction,
use the best existing knowledge of stock dynamics at
low population levels, and allow experts on stocks to bring
to bear all the available knowledge about life history and
conservation status in order to categorize risk of extinction
Distribution and Habitat Associations of Billfish and Swordfish Larvae across Mesoscale Features in the Gulf of Mexico
Ichthyoplankton surveys were conducted in surface waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico (NGoM) over a three-year period (2006–2008) to determine the relative value of this region as early life habitat of sailfish (Istiophorus platypterus), blue marlin (Makaira nigricans), white marlin (Kajikia albida), and swordfish (Xiphias gladius). Sailfish were the dominant billfish collected in summer surveys, and larvae were present at 37.5% of the stations sampled. Blue marlin and white marlin larvae were present at 25.0% and 4.6% of the stations sampled, respectively, while swordfish occurred at 17.2% of the stations. Areas of peak production were detected and maximum density estimates for sailfish (22.09 larvae 1000 m−2) were significantly higher than the three other species: blue marlin (9.62 larvae 1000 m−2), white marlin (5.44 larvae 1000 m−2), and swordfish (4.67 larvae 1000 m−2). The distribution and abundance of billfish and swordfish larvae varied spatially and temporally, and several environmental variables (sea surface temperature, salinity, sea surface height, distance to the Loop Current, current velocity, water depth, and Sargassum biomass) were deemed to be influential variables in generalized additive models (GAMs). Mesoscale features in the NGoM affected the distribution and abundance of billfish and swordfish larvae, with densities typically higher in frontal zones or areas proximal to the Loop Current. Habitat suitability of all four species was strongly linked to physicochemical attributes of the water masses they inhabited, and observed abundance was higher in slope waters with lower sea surface temperature and higher salinity. Our results highlight the value of the NGoM as early life habitat of billfishes and swordfish, and represent valuable baseline data for evaluating anthropogenic effects (i.e., Deepwater Horizon oil spill) on the Atlantic billfish and swordfish populations
Multilocus Bayesian Estimates of Intra-Oceanic Genetic Differentiation, Connectivity, and Admixture in Atlantic Swordfish (Xiphias gladius L.)
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